The Colombian government is very, very keen for you to come and spend your time and money here. This week in capital Bogotá as the 25th international film festival rolls out across the city's wonderful 1940s art deco picture houses, the tourist board is chasing dollars and euros and pounds.

A slick new marketing drive shows Europeans and Americans telling us how they came to visit and just couldn't leave, mingled with footage of the country's spectacular beauty. It ends on the slogan "Colombia: the only risk is wanting to stay" – which while slightly mangled in translation, is as punchy as it is pithy. It is also – at least if you're a tourist –true.

At a launch in London for the marketing campaign recently, I almost spat out my chicharron in surprise when a friend who lives on the country's pristine Caribbean coast appeared on screen as the promo video rolled.

Johannes, a scuba instructor, came to Colombia from Belgium five years ago and made his home in Santa Marta. He smiled at the camera and said the slogan like he meant it. It turns out everyone else on the video is real, too, and their stories all check out.

Third-division travel journalism is littered with the phrase: "XXX – Land of contrasts". But Colombia is more like a land of opposites. In the country that popularised magic realism, that shouldn't be a surprise. Nothing is as you expect it to be here. Every perception that you may have of the place is confounded the more you travel about.

The people were recently voted the third-happiest on earth. That the Colombians have kept their sense of humour when poverty, warfare, narcotrafficking and ultra-violence have benighted the place for so long beggars belief. But somehow, they have. Even in Bogotá, where the elegant, educated locals, or cachacos, are renowned as the country's most reserved bunch, strangers greet each other with courtesy, joke easily, and swap pleasantries.

The country is still in thrall to President Alvaro Uribe, the ultra-popular right-wing Washington favourite who has driven the Farc guerrilla force out of the cities and into the jungles and plains, far from the tourist areas.

The cinematic, bloodless rescue of French-Columbian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt in July after more than six years of jungle imprisonment by the Farc crowned a stellar year for Uribe, who has overseen a massive increase in foreign direct investment, tourism and economic growth in Colombia.

While his human rights record is rightly questioned by many, critics cannot deny his government's success in ravaging Latin America's oldest leftist insurgency. From a 17,000-strong army able to shut down major highways and spread terror in urban centres with car-bombs and kidnapping, the Farc now has just 9,000 soldiers and is widely unpopular. And in 2008, the rebels have lost their three top commanders, and hundreds have taken the bait of government rewards and deserted.

Ten years ago, you couldn't drive to the seaside in Colombia without hitting a Farc roadblock. Now, the guerrillas are battered, bruised and bleeding in the jungles, their populist – and necessary – cause of land reform and wealth distribution tainted by their undeniable links to the drugs trade, and their use of extortion and kidnapping.

Meanwhile, the idyllic Caribbean beaches of Parque Tayrona and Santa Marta are rammed with laughing locals and tourists: in 2007, 2.1m tourists visited Colombia – up from 830,000 in 2005.

Life has got better here, the majority of Colombians say, thanks to Uribe's military offensive. However, it's a campaign waged with Washington's dollars – $6bn of them since 1999 – under Plan Colombia, a controversial military aid programme which also attacks the coca trade (many campesinos' only means of survival).

Colombia in 2008 is not perfect; life has not improved for the millions of rural poor still caught up in the struggle between the guerrilla, the ill-famed army and the murderous paramilitary groups. Trade unionists are still targeted by death squads with impunity.

This is not a place where black-and-white certainties hold true; there are few purely good guys or bad guys here. But just five years ago, fearful tourists dodged Colombia. It's time that changed. If you want to help Colombians escape the grinding cycle of poverty and warfare, the best thing you can do is to put ideology, fear and prejudice to one side, visit here and spend your money.